10-month old only sits and stands for sleep
Hi! I'm on day 6 of sleep training my 10 month old. It's going pretty well, but he won't lay down. He stands or sits, often gripping the crib wall. He does this for hours, with head bobbing and eventually slumping against a wall. We hired a sleep coach who says this can happen with babies who have been held and cradled to sleep.
If you've faced this, how did you get your baby to lay down for sleep? Thank you thank you!
Sep 13, 2022
Parent Replies
This happened with my son when he learned how to stand. He had been sleep trained at 6 months and needed to be re-trained when learning to stand. I think he only would stand for max 1 hour so props to you for being able to handle it for more than 1 hour. He would eventually sit, slump over, then lay down. The first night was the hardest and eventually, he stopped standing for so long… 30 min then 10 min then 1-5 min. I really didn’t do anything but “wait him out”, watch him on the monitor, and keep myself from running in! It was really hard. Sorry if that’s not helpful but just want to commiserate with you. Good luck!
My daughter needed to be upright at that age and she was later diagnosed with sleep apnea. You may also want to look into the possibility of reflux.
We had something similar happen that's probably not the same thing but I figured I'd share anyway in case it's useful. This happened suddenly with our daughter when she was already sleep trained, around 14 months old. It turned out she was getting her molars and seemed to be in quite a lot of pain. Even with medicine, she'd cry for an hour or two at bedtime and then fall asleep sitting up, head bobbing, etc. (She'd wake up again in the night for a few hours, too. It was really a rough couple of weeks.) It was pretty unnerving for us but her doctor confirmed it was just the new teeth. This went on for about two weeks and then went away.
Sorry, sleep training is so hard! Our son went through periods when he would need to be re-sleep-trained. The nurse suggested that I sit in a chair and silently keep him company while he wailed, and he would just fall asleep standing up, fall over, wake himself up, and start wailing again. What actually worked was that I left the room to answer a phone call once and he just gave up and lay down by himself. Or maybe you could try giving him a gentle nudge when you notice he's almost fully asleep, and let him slump over on his own? Would it help to be told "This too shall pass?". My sister always told me that my son will not go to college not being able to fall asleep on his own, something along those lines. Babies all eventually learn to fall asleep. Good luck!